Tag Archives: Sales Training

I was approached last month by a European Training Magazine, to write a regular monthly article with regards to Business Development and Sales Training.

The first “The Perils of Outsourcing Sales Training” – will be published later this month.

Clearly I can’t just make this freely available outside the magazine – they would fall out with me pretty quickly if I did that – but I wanted to make sure that all those with access to all of my other free resources and articles didn’t miss out.

In the article I talk about;

Finding a sales trainer who shares your philosophy on sales – and actually cares about helping you and your team hit your targets

The truth regarding return on Investment, and what you can really expect rather than the bloated promises and percentage figures that some people just love to throw around.

How to ensure you’re working with someone who has studied the art and science of sales and also actually been there and done it (rather than just reading about being there and how others did it once).

If you go to this link and simply enter your first name and email address, the link for the PDF with the full article will appear in your inbox automagically within minutes.

Hope you find it useful, best regards

Chris

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Thanks for reading this blog post. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends. I’d also be delighted to connect via Twitter,YouTube and of course, through Varda Kreuz Training.

One of the main reasons I lasted long enough to become successful in sales and sales management, was the simple fact that throughout my career, a few people saw my potential and had the tenacity and patience to help me see it too.

I’ve quite literally filled books with the lessons they passed on, but here are just three that made a huge difference.

I need to share this with you before we go on – when I started my career in sales, I was appallingly bad, absolutely shocking. I was cocky, unreceptive, under the illusion that I could simply glide through with a smidgeon of natural talent and a touch of charm – and I shudder at the memory.

But it turns out, that’s precisely what enabled me to write my most popular books and sales training programmes for Varda Kreuz – in fact I meet ‘young me’ fairly regularly during training workshops – and I try to distil into twenty hours what a couple of incredible mentors and bosses showed me over the course of twenty years – and I’m forever grateful for the information they shared with me.

Lesson Number 1 – Deliver Value to the Business or Get out

When I was growing up, no one would ever have called my family wealthy and by the time I hit my teens I’d still never met anyone who I’d now classify as rich, and aspired for very little other than to possibly one day own my own home and drive a car.

If I had enough for the rent, an appetising fridge and enough for a few weekend beers with the boys – I was happy enough.

My first business to business sales role was a tough education – but they invested in me with training and sales tools and in return I put my suit on every day and polished my shoes.

Just earning the flat basic wage didn’t bother me, it would have been nice to receive a little more commission every month – but if it didn’t happen it wasn’t the end of the world.

I turned up for work with a smile and hoped sales would follow me in – but if they didn’t – hey, no worries.

I have to say it came as quite a bit of a shock when they fired me.

And although I don’t remember that particular sales manager as one of my favourite bosses, he changed my outlook on sales so that I’d never fall over so stupidly ever again – after that I made sure I made a difference and that the people who mattered saw the difference I was making.

Lesson Number 2 – Understand How You Help

For a good few years I walked in to see customers and sold AT them. Actually, that’s how everyone I knew sold – it’s still how most people I meet sell to this day.

Even after a week of solid, expensive, highly focused sales training with a big multi-national company – I had no concept of how I helped anyone.

We didn’t talk about it, we weren’t trained on it – no one internally saw it as a requirement or cared that it might be a better way of doing things – or produce more business.

It was a buyer called Terry Wiseman who helped me see it one Christmas.

Terry worked for a wholesaler – and told me that my generic Christmas Promotion was a bag of ****, pointless, not fit for purpose and that (correctly) it had been thought up by marketeers on the fifth floor who had never met a customer in their life.

That year I sold 5 boxes through Terry’s business.

The following Christmas I held up my hands, admitted that my ignorance towards customer buying motives and arrogant attitude wasn’t going to deliver either of us any bonus – and that’s when he opened my eyes.

He showed me why people bought my products, how they used them, what they needed them for – what flicked their switch, the quantity that they liked to purchase, the add-on purchases that could be acquired with the right bundle deal.

I sold 10,000 boxes that Christmas

Actually, it only occurred to me while writing this, that this lesson was delivered by a Wiseman at Christmas – and let me tell you, it was worth its weight in gold – Terry helped me see something I would later describe like this;

People buy drills because they want to create holes – bad salespeople present drills, great salespeople help them achieve the hole they need.

Lesson Number 3 – Make Sure You Can Go Back Again

So now my career is going through the roof – I mean flying.

Company-wide memos referencing my big wins are coming from the Managing Director’s office, I’m getting personal letters of thanks from the chairman and I’m regularly asked to host sales meetings to share my insight and techniques with the rest of the business.

I’ve had two promotions in six months and I’m being considered for another – a big one – before Easter.

And that was when my Sales Director – Craig Campbell – dropped a bombshell during my end-of-year appraisal.

“I know what you’re doing Chris – and it’s time to stop.”

“What do you mean ‘what I’m doing’? I’ll tell you what I’m doing – I’m knocking every sales target out of the park, I’m securing previously thought unwinnable contracts on a monthly basis, and I’m getting listings that no one has got anywhere near achieving in the last twenty years – that’s what I’m doing!”

The memory of his stare fills me with a chill to this day – and still makes me want to shut up immediately and leaves me feeling stupid twenty years after the event.

He put his pen on the appraisal document and slowly and precisely pointed out that my search for glory was about to fall flat on its own fat backside.

Yes – I had a knack for helping people, delivering the solution they needed and writing proposals that people actually wanted to read – and yes that had led to business going through the roof.

But that was the last time a customer ever heard from me.

Even when things went wrong or didn’t work out as well as I’d promised – I left their calls unanswered – I was too busy chasing the company-wide recognition, the next big win.

But that industry – just like every other – was too small to treat existing customers so badly.

My thinking was at least six months short of short-term thinking.

Contracts and tenders would come round again in a matter of months, new product launches would require presentations to the same groups of people, even if I moved to another business appointments would be few and far between because I’d lost their trust – and testimonials and referrals were just about to dry up and never return.

He also pointed out, that further down the line when I had my own sales team to manage, their reputation would be tainted by mine and no one would want to see them either, so that would end in failure too.

Craig shared all that with me, I nodded in embarrassment, his expression stretched into a smile – he told me that my future was bright and that I should do something about getting it back on track – and then he bought me a drink to toast my imminent success.

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Thanks for reading this blog post. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

In this blurry new, multi-tasking, on-line opportunistic world in which we all now live – it can sometimes be a little difficult to work out where marketing strategy stops and the sales process begins.

So, as a sales manager, it’s become more difficult to draw a distinct line between all the things a sales team should be doing – and all the activities that they love to spend time on – but lead them away from the straight and true path of your perfectly worked out plan.

If your circus is coming to town and you pay to have a poster on a billboard that says “The Circus Will be at the Football Ground on Saturday,” that’s Advertising.

If you put the same sign on the back of an elephant and walk it all the way through the town centre, that’s Promotion.

If the elephant “unexpectedly” walks through the mayor’s front garden and the local papers “just happen” to be there and write about it, that’s Publicity.

If you get the mayor to see the funny side – as well as the opportunity – and then you laugh together about the unfortunate elephant based madness, in front of all the reporters, photographers, prospective customers and voters, that’s PR.

If those prospective customers then buy tickets for the circus off you, and you answer all their questions and explain how much fun they’ll have if they hook-a-duck or hit the bell with the hammer when they visit the many entertainment booths, and ultimately, they spend lots of money at the circus, that’s Sales.

Here’s the problem though.

A large group of salespeople – whose sole purpose is to sell – think their time could be better spent elsewhere, away from all that boring, unproductive sales stuff.

They think they should be growing the business and driving customers towards them by taking the elephant for a walk or finding a way to make the mayor laugh. (They’re also usually the ones who dream of winning The Apprentice, but that’s another article all together)

Here’s a question to all the sales managers out there;

If it was your job to ensure that a swamp was cleared by the end of the month and everyone who worked for you just decided to do their own thing – created their own interpretation of what you actually meant by “help meclear this swamp” – would that be acceptable?

No – I know it wouldn’t – but I’ve seen it happen with far too many sales targets and business plans.

So, why is it that – once you’ve created that perfect swamp clearing plan and readied yourself for the long hours and focused effort required – the team suddenly decide that it would be a much better idea instead, if they;

Planted a few herbaceous borders to make the swamp look a littlebrighter, or

Wrote you a detailed plan about why you should outsource some of the jobs that they thought were beneath them, or

Started to find new homes for the recently displaced alligators, or

Spent time starting to build a long term relationship with the drainage company, or

Just tried to dump their bit of the swamp behind another colleague’s wheel barrow.

At Varda Kreuz, we like to break the job of a sales manager down into four easily understandable sections which come together to create something called the FAMEEffect;

Focus

Accountability

Motivation

Education

When we talk about FOCUS, we ask the question – WHAT – as in “What jobs need doing?”

And when we talk about ACCOUNTABILITY we ask the question – WHO – as in “Whose job is it?”

I mentioned in an earlier article – As a sales manager it is not your job to hit the sales target – it’s your job to ensure the target gets hit!

Subtle difference in words – massive difference in results.

When I was a sales director a while back, we were recruiting to expand the field sales team and I asked the Southern Sales Manager what he was looking for in a perfect candidate, to which he answered;

“Someone who makes my job as easy as possible.”

Simple, honest, precise – and spot on.

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Thanks for reading this article. On my blog, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

Relationship selling is a strange beast and countless authors have made many, many dollars explaining to sales people how to use it to their advantage.

Here’s a quick question for you;

Why do you think those buyers are entering into a relationship with YOU?

Is it because she doesn’t have enough friends? Maybe he has empty seats at his wedding, or do you think they’re trying to build a trade only pub quiz team, and they need you as captain?

Or maybe – just maybe – it’s because they make their living by meeting people just like us and getting the best deal for the most suitable product or service?

Just thought I’d throw it in there.

If you truly think that business is mostly about relationships, let me ask you another question;

How many bad second hand cars would you buy off your brother?

What the Buyers said;

“While I understand they have a budget for these things, I don’t need constant offers to be taken to lunch, golf, or ballgames, particularly if I’m not currently doing business with them. I’m a fellow professional, not a date to be wooed.”

“I hate it when a salesperson tries to be my best friend on the first call!”

Solution

You need to understand that being a fairly affable human being is actually a prerequisite for the job. You have to be a likeable individual; you have to be someone that others wish to spend time with – that’s a given.

However, you’re never going to blackmail a professional buyer into something that isn’t right for them with friendship – and if you think about it, that’s a fairly horrible thing to do any way.

Understand that they have a job to do, if you want them to retain your services, then you need to give them exceptional reasons for doing so. Regularly give your time and expertise freely and continuously strive to be viewed as valuable – rather than simply likeable – by engaging in activities that they see as having genuine value.

“This is how you must be. You must become as evangelical about your promised outcome as he is about his. You must believe that you, and you alone, have the solution to your prospects problems. Even if they do not recognise those problems themselves.”

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The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

“I just want to improve my closing, that’s all I need really. If I could close more sales everythingelse would fall into place.”

Which is partly true, however the ability to close effectively doesn’t have its origins in the fourth quarter of the sales process.

Anthony Robbins tells a great story about his meeting with a client, a plastic surgeon. He arrives early and while he’s in the waiting room, he picks up a book which the plastic surgeon has written.

As Anthony Robbins turns the pages, he sees pictures of the most beautiful people on earth, all surrounded by mathematical equations. This surgeon had actually worked out what it took to possess, and then how to create, the perfect face.

It turns out that, if the philtrum (the groove between your nose and top lip) is exactly the same size as your eye, your face would be in perfect balance – the perfect face.

One millimetre out and you have an average face, two millimetres out (according to Anthony Robbins) and you’re butt-ugly.

One millimetre out! Isn’t it amazing that something so small can make so much difference?

Let’s change the analogy.

Imagine if you’re sailing from Portsmouth, in the UK, to New York and your course starts out just one degree off.

One degree out doesn’t get you just outside New York – your little boat would find itself all the way up in Canada.

And it’s the same with every sales situation you’ll ever walk into.

If you don’t Earn the Right to sell to them, to be allowed to progress through each and every stage, right from the beginning – even misjudging it by the tiniest degree – you’ll end up miles away from a “Yes” by the time you get to your well-practised close, without even realising where it all went wrong.

Which is when most prospects turn round and say;

“Do you know what, I’m going to have to think about it!”

If you like – it’s at that point you could try to bully them with a couple of “sales mind tricks” – although I wouldn’t hold out much hope with an experienced buyer.

What the Buyers said

“Why do some salespeople think they’re being so clever? I see salespeople every day, how do they think some sleazy, worn out way of phrasing a close is suddenly going to make me change my mind? ”

“Salespeople should be honest. If they don’t know the answer to a question they should hold their hands up and say – sorry I don’t know the answer to that but I will find out and get back to you – rather than guess and are invariably wrong!”

Solution

Walk in understanding that if you don’t earn their trust at the beginning and throughout your conversation and presentation, they sure as hell won’t trust you with their money at the end.

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The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

I recently spent some time with an extremely senior group of sales people from one of the world’s biggest companies, who told me that everything was down to price.

No it isn’t.

Take for example their business. Ten senior sales people, big cars, expenses accounts, support staff – that’s a cost per person of at least £100,000 a year.

So that team of ten cost at least one million pounds to keep on the road – and they were a tiny percentage of the entire sales team.

When I suggested to them, that if all their problems were indeed down to price – and that the sales team could make no difference whatsoever – then surely getting rid of just those ten salespeople and changing the business model to a click down menu on a website, would save the business at least one million pounds.

If we did that, we could knock £1 off a million units immediately – if it was all down to price, then that’s the problem solved.

They didn’t like that idea at all.

But that unfortunately is the undeniable truth.

If the sales team don’t know or can’t explain the difference between their business and a lesser priced competitor – they become an expensive folly.

What the Buyers said;

“What’s the point of sales people who are unable to justify their mark-up percentage and margins?”

“Of course I’m going to hammer everyone down on price, that’s my job. That doesn’t mean to say I want tat! Getting the job done and receiving great value is what I’m paid for too.”

Solution

Work out the 5 reasons you are better value than the competition and then learn how to explain that to your customers.

Remember, evangelists don’t try and tell you about heaven to secure their place, they’re already going. They tell you because they don’t want you to miss out on paradise.

That is how you should be with your product or service. Get in there and help prospects make great buying decisions before some con artist tries to rip them off, overcharge them or sell them something they didn’t need or don’t want.

The piece above is taken from an article which appeared in this month’s Institute of Sales & Marketing Management’s Winning Edge Magazine – which I wrote after asking almost half a million professional buyers one simple question; “How do most sales people let themselves down?”

If you’ve reached the heady heights of Sales Management and now feel that your day job can often be likened to herding cats, I’d like to share with you 4 words that will help you and your team to become more productive, more professional, more efficient, more effective and perceived more positively than ever before.

These four key ingredients, when put together correctly, have shaped many first time managers (and a few old hands) into exceptional leaders.

They are the four pieces of the management jigsaw that come together to create (what we at Varda Kreuz like to call) the FAME Effect;

Focus

Accountability

Motivation

Education

Let me explain.

FOCUS

You’ve got to start off by truly understanding the real role of any manager or leader.

It’s about working out where your focus should actually be, and why some of the jobs currently filling your day – shouldn’t even be on your to do list.

During our FAME Workshops we begin by taking a look at the need for goals, and the direction in which you’ll be pointing everyone – while understanding exactly where that journey is going to take you all at the end.

This set of goals and a clear sense of direction will lead you to a vision that will define what you expect from those who you’ve chosen to sail the ship with you – which then enables you to sharpen and direct their focus too.

Along the way, you’re also going to have to work out what it is you’re counting – what numbers really define success – and why. Work out whether the things you measure are truly important to arriving at your destination or not.

The way you measure your business is the way you manage it – so you’ll need to work out exactly what needs measuring and then measure nothing else.

So now you know what needs doing, it’s time to work out who is going to be accountable for achieving each piece of the plan.

This piece of the jigsaw is all about defining responsibilities – yours and theirs – and helping individuals take ownership and the responsibility for nurturing their small corner of the global business garden.

You’ve also got to recognise what you’re accountable for and the need to be a role model – and that doesn’t mean doing their job for them.

ACCOUNTABILITY makes us ask – WHO – as in “Whose job is it?”

MOTIVATION

So, once you’ve worked out what you’re all supposed to be doing, the next thing a successful manager and leader needs to work out, is why anyone is going to care enough to finish the job, and better than that – care enough to finish it brilliantly.

Yes they’re probably being paid – and I know you think that should be enough – but really, is that what makes you jump out of bed every morning and do your best work? Or are there other drivers that come into play?

I’ll bet your incredible work ethic is driven by more than just money, isn’t it?

When you help a friend or maybe do a little work for charity or the community – do you put in less effort because there’s no monetary reward?

MOTIVATION answers the question – WHY – as in “Why is this job worth doing?”

EDUCATION

So now, you know what needs doing and everyone is passionate about helping you achieve it.

Education in this context isn’t about teaching anyone on your team how to suck eggs.

But the world changes continuously, in many cases what was standard just a few years ago can easily be outdated next week.

It’s about developing and nurturing fabulous talent so that they can be the best that they can be.

It’s about understanding and developing effective coaching strategies and communication skills so that every member of the team stays on the right path, and informed – in the correct fashion, but in no uncertain terms – when they are not.

EDUCATION answers the question – HOW – as in “How does this job get done with spectacular results?”

To launch my latest book – The Managers Guide to Achieving FAME – I’m holding a number of FAME Sales Management Workshops throughout September.

The UK Workshop is taking place at the beautiful Mottram Hall in Cheshire on Thursday 25 September – and to ensure that I get to spend the appropriate amount of time with each of those attending, places are extremely limited.

I hope you can make it – together with a full day’s management training and all workshop materials, those attending will also receive a signed pre-publication copy of the new book and four exercises exclusive to this workshop to take back and use with their teams at their quarterly sales meetings.